“John Baldessari: Pure Beauty” at LACMA, Los Angeles, June 27–Sept. 12, 2010Last year, the British were spoiled with this massive retrospective; in June it will finally travel to Baldessari’s native California. None of his early paintings will be on display — he had them cremated — but just about every other period of his idiosyncratic career will be covered. His text-heavy early work looks like conceptual art, though it’s more waggish than that genre’s stereotype: One 1971 lithograph reads, “I will not make any more boring art.” We'd argue he’s fulfilled that promise since, mining found photographs (and eventually returning to painting) to create an inimitably bizarre vision of contemporary culture: America, as seen through the eyes of aliens